Editors

Henry Lowood talks to German videogame magazine Game-Face about game preservation, game art, and the How They Got Game project at Stanford University. [mental note: Wow, I was able to use the word "game" five times in the same sentence...]

Nearly a year ago, I wondered about, "serious games? why not serious machinima?" on this blog. Well, it's happening. Consider the connection between One World Action (OWA) and the Online Machinima Film Festival (OMFF). One World Action "is working to create the power and opportunity for the poorest citizens to transform their own lives, and to challenge the international policies that make and keep people poor." That is certainly a serious agenda.

I am delighted to spread the word that Doug Wilson, who has been a big part of How they Got Game, has just been awarded a Fulbright Program scholarship. He will spend the next year abroad in Copenhagen at the IT University, working with the game studies group there around Espen Aarseth, T. L. Taylor, and Jesper Juul. This is a very competitive program, and Doug is a well-deserving recipient of the scholarship.

The How They Got Game group is launching a series of workshops on game culture and game studies. Organized by Henrik Bennetsen, the workshops will take place twice per month at the Stanford Humanities Lab (Wallenberg Hall, Building 120, 4th floor) and they will have different formats, e.g. lectures, presentations, and conversations with game scholars, students, and members of the industry. Here are all the details regarding the first two meetings:

"For the most part, it's not that we're looking for a needle in a haystack, but we're looking for broad properties that require good statistics," said Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University. As one of the scientists behind the project, Pande is proud to say that Folding@home has actually provided useful information to the scientific community. SETI@home, however, has yet to discover a single alien transmission. (Alex Handy, Gamasutra)

That Leeroy is the game's biggest failure rather than its highest achiever may explain why he's transcended the self-referential sphere of World of Warcraft and moved into the realm of pop culture. Everyone everywhere has pulled a Leeroy. "There's something more universal about this guy who screws things up for everybody than someone who is the best at something," says Henry Lowood, curator for film and media collections at Stanford University. "If you're not a player in the game, you are not going to be that interested in how spectacularly good a player is.